Is Florida State the Next Tennessee?

Eleven years ago, Tennessee and Florida State met in the Fiesta Bowl for the National Championship, led by two of the most legendary coaches of all time, Phillip Fulmer and Bobby Bowden.

The two schools had muchmore  in common besides the fact that both coaches were well on their way to becoming legends. Both teams were from southern schools where football comes above anything else. (Even though we most commonly associate Tennessee with Pat Summit and lady's hoops, it's football that inspires the singing of Rocky Top in those parts.) Both teams defeated Florida on their way to college football glory that season.

Tennessee, which had the question of how to replace legend Peyton Manning prior to the season, ended up victorious, winning 23-16.  Florida State ended up winning the National Title the next year, becoming the first team to ever go from wire to wire as No. 1 in the country.

A decade later, both teams are in flux, and their legendary coaches who led their charges that January evening in the desert are no longer at their respective schools, both of them being pushed out unceremoniously.

Last season, Tennessee unceremoniously pushed out Fulmer and then hired former Oakland Raiders Head Coach Lane Kiffin. Upon leaving the Raiders, Kiffin was referred to by his former boss Al Davis as "a flat-out liar" and had said that he had "brought disgrace to the Oakland Raiders organization." At the time Davis made those allegations, many fans laughed because the Raiders had been a disgrace to the NFL since losing the Super Bowl in 2003. But through actions made by Kiffin in the year since becoming Tennessee's head coach, he might have proven Davis correct.

Kiffin accused Urban Meyer of recruiting violations, then had to retract that statement. He then told a recruit that if he played at the University of South Carolina, he'd be "pumping gas for the rest of his life," a funny statement considering that most gas stations nowadays are self-serve anyway.

On top of that, he hired his father Monte Kiffin as defensive coordinator. Prior to the hiring, Monte Kiffin was the defensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is widely credited along with Tony Dungy for inventing the "Tampa 2" defensive scheme. Now there's nothing wrong with going to work for your son, but Monte left the Bucs in the middle of the season, when the Bucs were 9-3 and closing in on an NFC South Title.

After his son hired him, the older Kiffin refused to go to coaching meetings and take an active role as head coach, and the Bucs wound up with a record of 9-7, missing the playoffs completely, including a loss to his son's former team in the last game of the season. 

Kiffin, though, is no longer the head coach of the University of Tennessee. After a year when he exceeded many expectations, he picked up and left for the University of Southern California after their head coaching job became vacant, similar in a manner to how his father left the Buccaneers the year before.

I've long believed that once you sign a contract, you stick to it until either it expires or you're terminated, the only exception being a move from college to the pros. Now if you want to go somewhere else, don't make things worse by lying about it. Because of this I have no respect for Nick Saban, as he did not stick to his contract while with the Dolphins and lied about it in the process. What Kiffin did might not have been as bad, but he still betrayed a university that had hired him when it seemed like no one would. 

Because of this, Tennessee now finds itself coachless for now, picking up the pieces, and beginning to rebuild again for the second straight year.

The hope for Florida State is that the same thing doesn't happen to them, but history tells us it might.

Jimbo Fisher was hired by FSU in 2006 to be its offensive coordinator/head coach in waiting. Had he not been hired as FSU's head coach by 2010, FSU would've owed him $5 million. A savvy move by his agent to get him such a guarantee, but it only ended up putting more pressure, unnecessary pressure, on Bowden. After a good start that included a heart breaking loss to Miami, the team went on a trip to Provo to take on then predicted BCS Buster BYU that ended in a massive thumping of the Cougars.

Things turned around for the worst, though, against South Florida: a 17-7 loss at home. Usually when the score is 17-7, you'd blame the offense, which Jimbo Fisher was in charge of. But the blame went to Bobby, and that's when the pressure for Bowden to step down officially started, leading to a distraction that would hover over the team all year. We all know how it ended. Bowden was given the option to return in a limited role, but decided to retire instead. Thankfully he was able to leave on a winning note.

Still the question remains is, how much did Fisher have to do with pushing Bobby out? And how come no one really talked about or investigated his role in this? Fisher was a candidate for the Alabama job before he was hired at FSU, and it went to his former boss and friend, Nick Saban.

So now here we are, eleven years after their meeting in the Fiesta Bowl for the National Championship, and again Florida State and Tennessee have much in common. At least Florida State has a head coach in place and a great recruiting class coming in, but how loyal would Fisher feel toward Florida State if he has a bad year and/or another, more lucrative coaching job becomes available? Who's to say that Florida State next year won't find itself in the same position that Tennessee finds itself in now?

One thing I can tell you is that FSU and Tennessee will have in common this year: neither of them will beat Florida.